December 2016 Field Visit – Campbell’s Swamp

I was at a loss as to where to visit for my final field trip of 2016, when a friend on Twitter unwittingly provided inspiration:

So off to Griffith I went to visit Campbell’s Swamp.

October 2016 Field Visit – Fivebough Swamp in flood

I must confess to a spot of laziness this month. With plenty of time available, and much sunnier weather than we’ve had in months, I had many opportunities to head out for a field visit during October, but I left off doing so until the final weekend (I did get a lot of washing and some yard work done, though, so I’m counting it as a productive month from a non-blogging perspective).

My tardiness was then capped off by a spot of not thinking things through properly, and I decided to head to Leeton’s Fivebough Swamp for this month’s trip. I managed to forget the part where this has been a high-rainfall year, and although Fivebough is now actively managed, it has for millennia been a drainage depression below a line of hills – aka a place that catches water in high-rainfall years (I don’t know, I was distracted, the brain cells just did not connect).

I have previously blogged about visits to Fivebough in January this year and last, so you might like to compare with the photos from those visits.

Currently, the main entrance to Fivebough looks like this:

July 2016 Not Quite a Field Visit – Armchair Birding

Winter this year has been cold and wet, and I’ve gotten sick more than once, so no field trip happened this month. I have however been reading ‘Where Song Began’ by Tim Low, which has been very interesting, and has taught me a lot of things about Australian (and international) birds and biogeography that I didn’t previously know.

The cover of ‘Where Song Began’ – image from The Book Depository

January 2016 Field Visit – Fivebough Swamp

Hello everyone, and welcome to 2016.

I started last year with a field visit to Fivebough Swamp in Leeton, and I hadn’t intended to do the same this year, but I was in Leeton and awake at 6:30am the morning after it had rained, so what else could I do but go for a walk at Fivebough?

Heading into Fivebough swamp early in the morning.

July’s roadside birds

It’s a week later than I’d hoped to get these up, but here are my roadside birding pics from my aborted attempt at a field trip in July.

Birds on a wire near Coleambally. They flew off before I managed to get a good view of them, and I can’t ID them from this photo, it’s possible they’re introduced Blackbirds (Turdus merula).

Long-billed Corellas (Cacatua tenuirostris) at Darlington Point.